What’s Behind Ben Goldacre?

By John Stone
http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/08/whats-behind-ben-goldacre-.html
After years of secrecy on the matter confirmation has finally come
to light that Guardian ‘Bad Science’ journalist Ben Goldacre is the
son of Oxford professor of public health Michael J Goldacre (HERE).
Prof Goldacre has been director since 1986 of the UK Department
Health funded Unit of Healthcare Epidemiology (HERE).
The family relationship is mentioned in a review of Goldacre
junior’s Bad Science book in the peer-review journal Medicine,
Conflict and Survival (25, p.255-7, 2009)by Dr Ian Fairlie,
but there has been a long term lack of candour about the matter.
While the reasons for the secrecy remain unknown it is possible that
if the relationship, which has never before been mentioned in the
mainstream media or scientific publications, had been common
knowledge it might have raised questions about the independence of
the younger Goldacre’s views. Goldacre senior was a co-author of a
study of the effects of GlaxoSmithKline’s notorious Urabe strain
version of MMR, Pluserix, after it was suddenly withdrawn from
public use in 1992 (HERE):
the Unit has produced several MMR related studies.

Ben Goldacre’s column which started in 2003 has featured his largely
epidemiological approach to health issues, most prominently MMR and
autism. Coming apparently from nowhere, journalistically speaking,
he was promoted to the role of an “opinion leader” from the outset.
His early article MMR: Never mind the facts won the accolade of the
GlaxoSmithKline sponsored Association of British Science Writers’
award for the best feature article of 2003.

The article, however, used flawed epidemiology for which he later
offered no defence (HERE),
as well as including an anonymous attack on Andrew Wakefield by one
of Wakefield’s colleagues. This was just the first of several
notable interventions Ben Goldacre in the MMR affair. A
stock-in-trade has been his generalised attacks on parents of MMR
damaged children. His Bad Science blogsite for a long time
offered this intimidatory advice to would-be contributors:

“..personal anecdotes about your MMR tragedy will be deleted for
your own safety”(HERE)

A fundamental of Ben Goldacre’s journalistic method is the ad
hominem and he always talks across opponents: he can always depend
on the greater prominence of his published views and he never
answers the many awkward criticisms.

The Goldacre dynasty seem to be one of several with on-going
connections with the MMR affair:

*Dr Evan Harris, the former MP, who accompanied Brian Deer
to make accusations against Andrew Wakefield and colleagues, and
led a debate under privilege in the House of Commons making
further allegations of unethical practices (HERE)
is the son of paediatrician Prof Frank Harris who sat on the
Committee on Safety in Medicines and the adverse reactions to
vaccine committee ARVI in the early 1990s when Pluserix MMR
vaccine had to be withdrawn (HERE)
, (HERE)
, (HERE).

*Paul Nuki, the Sunday Times features editor, who hired
journalist Brian Deer to investigate Andrew Wakefield with the
statement “I need something big” on “MMR” (
HERE) was the son of Prof George Nuki who was on the
Committee on Safety of Medicines when MMR and Pluserix were
introduced in the late 1980s.

*The Davis brothers Sir Crispin and Sir Nigel. Sir Crispin
was CEO of Reed Elsevier, publishers of the Lancet, when Lancet
editor Richard Horton denounced Andrew Wakefield to the BBC but
was also a non-executive director of MMR defendants
GlaxoSmithKline, and Sir Nigel was the High Court judge who
upheld the Legal Services Commission to withhold funding from
the MMR case a week later without disclosing a family connection
to the case (HERE).
Sir Crispin gave evidence against Andrew Wakefield to a Commons
committee as CEO of Reed Elsevier, cross-examined by Evan
Harris, in which he neither disclosed his GSK directorship or
his brother’s judicial involvement in the case (HERE).

* In 2009 James Murdoch CEO of News International,
publishers of the Sunday Times joined the board of GSK, with a
responsibility to "review external issues that might have the
potential for serious impact upon the group's business and
reputation" (HERE).
This was immediately followed by renewed “overkill” type attacks
in Times newspapers on Andrew Wakefield by Brian Deer and
others.

For several years Ben
Goldacre kept his distance from the Deer allegations against
Wakefield, preferring to use the epidemiological literature to
combat and deride concern about MMR and autism. In another ABSW
award winning article Don’t dumb me down sponsored by
Syngenta he wrote:

“people periodically come up to me and say, isn't it funny how
that Wakefield MMR paper turned out to be Bad Science after all? And
I say: no. The paper always was and still remains a perfectly good
small case series report, but it was systematically misrepresented
as being more than that, by media that are incapable of interpreting
and reporting scientific data.”
(HERE)

Remarkably, Evan Harris - who originally made the allegations about
scientific fraud against Wakefield and colleagues under privilege in
a House of Commons debate in March 2004 – was on the panel of
judges that made the award (HERE).

Indeed, Goldacre was right: the claims were convoluted and tenuous.
When the GMC finally brought in its verdict against the three
doctors in January 2010 it managed to find them guilty both of
conducting the Legal Aid Board protocol in the Lancet study
and guilty of not conducting it at the same time. Since the
Lancet paper was as Goldacre had stated a ‘a perfectly good
small case series report’ and “ an early report” as paper itself
stated, Wakefield and colleagues were found with remarkable
ingenuity to be in innumerable respects in breach of the terms of
the protocol which they had reasonably pleaded they were not doing.

By this stage, however, Goldacre had “dumbed” himself “down” and
welcomed the verdict (HERE).
In retrospect this looks like nothing so much as an elaborate ploy
in which the medical and political establishment were giving
themselves a policy in case the GMC failed to bring in a guilty
verdict. If this had happened the polemical position evolved by Ben
Goldacre over seven years, based on dodgy epidemiology, might have
provided the main defence for MMR.

There have been a number of other key moments when Ben Goldacre has
intervened in the MMR debate. In 2005 Daily Mail columnist
Melanie Phillips, alone in the journalistic profession, correctly
spied the weakness in the newly published Cochrane review of MMR (HERE).
While this had been successfully spun to give the impression MMR was
safe, the real findings were that after sifting 5000 related studies
and reviewing the 31 best the evidence base for MMR safety was
“largely inadequate”, while individually several of the autism
studies had come in for scathing criticism, and none of them was
strong (HERE).
Goldacre berated Phillips for knowing nothing about science, but the
reality was that she was the only journalist who had taken the
trouble to read the small print and dared to say the emperor had no
clothes. There is no doubt in this attack that ad hominem prevailed
over substantive discussion of the science (HERE).
There is a dangerous message here from Goldacre of ‘leave it to the
scientists’, but scientists are human, subject to institutional
bullying and manipulation: many will not speak up against the
powerful interests, or they speak, as did Cochrane, “with forked
tongue”. Goldacre’s attack on Phillips sounded plausible, but the
problem with the literature that Cochrane reviewed was not that the
science was “imperfect” as Goldacre put it, it was that it was
mostly no good whatsoever. And hiding behind a few weasel statements
Cochrane had said just that.

In 2007 Goldacre led an attack via the Guardian on its
sister newspaper the Observer contributing to the dismissal
of its editor, Roger Alton. The Observer had published
ahead of the GMC hearing against Drs Wakefield, Walker-Smith and
Murch an account of a study which showed the autism rate amongst
Cambridgeshire schoolchildren to be running at 1 in 58. One of the
authors concerned about the seriousness of the situation and delays
in publication had leaked an early version of the paper to the
newspaper. The story was denied by lead author Simon Baron-Cohen,
ridiculed by Goldacre, and the Rwanda massacre denying director of
Science Media Centre, Fiona Fox, organised an institutional hanging
party against the newspaper. Then, a few months later, when the
furore had died down, the article had been removed, the Observer
editor sacked, Baron-Cohen gave a presentation at the London IMFAR
conference, which showed that story had been correct all along (HERE)
.

It has been a lamentable feature of Ben Goldacre’s contribution to
the public discussion of science in the UK that he has everywhere
generated an atmosphere of intolerance in support of his views, and
rather than raise the tone of the debate it has encouraged a new
kind of scientific infantilism, in which you deride your opponents
and defer to authority. The ruthlessness of this power was
demonstrated when LBC radio journalist Jeni Barnett questioned the
heavy-hand of the MMR lobby. She could not have been proved more
right when the station was inundated by protests from Goldacre’s
website, LBC removed the broadcast from its website, and Goldacre
arranged for Liberal-Democrat Members of Parliament to organise a
motion censuring Barnett: the second signatory inevitably being Evan
Harris (HERE
,
HERE).

A recent development in Ben Goldacre’s career has been the
projection of himself as an arbiter of research ethics. It remains
hard to judge the sincerity of his position. While he has recently
attacked GSK over the diabetes drug Avandia (HERE) this
is only after many years of controversy surrounding the product and
with the US Food and Drugs Administration about to take action. Only
last year he led a hostile campaign against Express
journalist, Lucy Johnston, for her reporting of GSK’s HPV vaccine
Cervarix. (HERE).
Yet the long term efficacy of the product is still to be
demonstrated, and to attack concerns about safety is to prejudice
the issue in relation to those who suffer adverse effects.
Goldacre’s angry denunciation is an essence no better than a public
relations agenda (on behalf of whom?), and can only prejudice the
science. Johnston, on the other hand, was just trying to report.

There is not a little irony in the doctor-journalist who sells ‘MMR
is Safe’ T-shirts, mugs and baby-bibs from his website (HERE
) calling for an end to scientific spin (HERE).
Did Cochrane say that? No, Cochrane said “The design and reporting
of safety outcomes in MMR vaccine studies, both pre- and
post-marketing is largely inadequate”
HERE, which is quite different. The calculation apparently would
appear to be that we are by now all too stupid or too intimidated to
call his bluff.

I agree with Ben Goldacre, we need an end to spin and he can start
at home: we not only need to know what we are being told, we also
need to know why. And we can do with an end to the totalitarian
tactics.

John Stone is UK Editor for
Age of Autism.

Comments

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Mike Stanton said:

"This was a study that criticized Pluserix
and demonstrated a link between the Urabe mumps component and
aseptic meningitis."

Jake said:
"And totally played down its potential public health impact":

This article was not a 'study'; it was a government sponsored
attempt to ameliorate public and medical concern about the Urabe
scandal. Some 'statistics' were produced to claim that 'wild'
measles was 4x more likely to cause aseptic meningitis, but they
then go on to say that the diagnosed cases of aseptic meningitis
were a 'chance' finding in children investigated for seizures.
They failed to state that seizures was another serious side
effect caused by this vaccine. The implication was that aseptic
meningitis was no 'big deal' in children anyway!!

How was the aseptic meningitis diagnosed?? In exactly the
same way as meningitis is always diagnosed, by a lumbar puncture
or spinal tap.

This article was written in 1993, 5 years before the
Wakefield et al fateful Lancet article and 17 years before Dr
Wakefield and his colleague Professor Walker Smith were struck
off by the GMC for, amongst other things, 'subjecting' chldren
to unnecessary lumbar punctures and spinal taps. Oh the irony!!

I believe the Wellcome Trust severed its ties with
Glaxo Wellcome in the 1990s. Interesting that they should be in
partnership over a project with Merck (who obviously badly need
the money). They also sponsor Ben Goldacre:

"Competing interests: BG has written newspaper articles and
part of a book criticising questionable activities in the drug
industry, and has a Clinical Research Training Fellowship from
the Wellcome Trust."

Ben Goldacre,'Is the conflict of interest unacceptable when
drug companies conduct trials on their own drugs? Yes'

Of course, I agree with what Ben Goldacre says in the article
(based on an Oxford Union debate) as far as it goes, although he
does not really live up to the title but simply argues that drug
industry trials should be more transparent and better regulated.

As to GSK, he certainly benefitted by £2000 from their
largesse in 2004.

"This was a study that criticized Pluserix
and demonstrated a link between the Urabe mumps component and
aseptic meningitis."

And totally played down its potential public health impact:

"Comparison of national reports of virus-positive mumps
meningitis cases before and after the introduction of this
vaccine indicated that the risk from wild mumps was about 4-fold
higher than from vaccine."
PMID: 8096942

GSK...no kidding? What a surprise! What's the relationship
between GSK and the Wellcome Trust? What's the relationship
between the Wellcome Trust and global vaccine policy? What's the
relationship between Merck vaccines and the Wellcome Trust?

I
would like to be clear that at no point did I suggest that Prof
Goldacre works for the pharmaceutical industry, though it is
evident that he works in part for the UK government. A big part
of problem we have here is transparency - and I am talking about
the problem here and not about the Goldacres. We actually need
systems which are not opaque and in which agencies have
independence from each other and don't police themselves. What
we have instead to a very large extent is an impenetrable
morass, and perhaps the only real defence is disclosure.

But disclosure is not enough: we also have to avoid extreme
and absurd conflicts, and while it is not at all bothersome that
Prof Goldacre took part in reviewing the urabe policy,it is more
worrying that the lead author of the study in which he took part
was Prof Elizabeth Miller who was on the committee that passed
the vaccine for use in the first place:

Again, without making any personal remarks, it is just not
possible for someone to investigate themselves. Also, it is a
matter of record the Prof Miller's laboratory was heavily funded
by the industry:

To defend the public interest you need the media to be as
sceptical about the Department of Health ast they are about the
Ministry of Defence, and as sceptical about pharmaceutical
manufacturers as they are about arms manufacturers. Instead,
they now only seem concerned about offending these people.

Apart from this, looking back here at the posts criticising
me I think it is noteworthy that they have focused on the
potential COI issue, rather than the other matters on which I
have taken Ben Goldacre to task, as if they don't need answer.

We
cannot continue to "play the fool" for the sociopaths that are
so well-described in this article. Our very survival is at
stake. The flu season in the Northern Hemisphere is right around
the corner.

Science lives and dies based on transparency, credibilty and
disclosures of potential conflicts of interest. That his father
works for the industry and that he mostly defends it's position
except when the obvious is about to occur (removal withdrawl of
a prodouct) and has not disclosed and therefore hid the
relationship AND he has no real credentials,( he has no
licensure to practice medicine anywhere in the world), his
opinions, which are clearly biased and conflicted, should be
regarded as pure prepaid nonsense.

Why should anyone listen to a non medical person speak
authoritatively on a medical subject with which he has no
training, none. He cannot even prescribe an aspirin yet he is an
authority on vaccines? He proffers his daddy's opinion so his
daddy can get paid - even if it kills all of our children.

You people(yeah you people) that support this whack job
really need to seek proffesional help, could it be that this is
your twisted cry for help?

Wonderful reporting. Thank you for putting all those names up in
one article. To follow along with this web of deceit is both sad
and yet, not surprising. What a shame that so many thousands of
children have fallen victim to vaccine injuries due in part to
these corrupt men.

It
is good to glimpse at the dynastic origins of the Goldacre
smugness, snarkiness and scientific sophistry ... but a further
psychiatric evaluation is required in advance of a trial for
crimes against humanity.

Also to the psychiatrist's chair must be brought the
professors ... Professors Meadow, Southall, Salisbury,
Colquhoun, Greenhalgh and paediatric Professor Terence
Stephenson and honorary Professors Horton and Brian Deer.

This is an interesting insight into the disturbing practice of
how journalists’ with integrity are taken out. And revealing
this Pharma hit man’s connection to a family member, in turn
connected to Pharma, is apt.

John, your article is amazing. Unfortunately, Ben Goldacre isn't
going down like Adam Bly's "Science"Blogs. Hopefully, he'll do
something as stupid as giving PepsiCo its own paid-for
"nutrition" blog and get run out of the business of opinion
"journalism"/blogging for good.

John as another writer has written excellent detective work but
is it all a great surprise , no not really there are major major
conflicts of interest here and while these people hold power
they will always get away with the most serious of issues , this
information needs to be in a court of law and these so called
examples for human beings need to be held to account for their
lies and their part in encouraging the sale of vaccines that
damage our precious children shame on you all and i have no idea
how you sleep of a night

John,
you wrote that, "Goldacre senior was a co-author of a study of
the effects of GlaxoSmithKline’s notorious Urabe strain version
of MMR, Pluserix, after it was suddenly withdrawn from public
use in 1992."

This was a study that criticized Pluserix and
demonstrated a link between the Urabe mumps component and
aseptic meningitis. It was a contribution to vaccine safety and
not part of a cover up.

I think you have mixed up two different people. I did
follow the link after Chris's post. It took me to Chris MacDonald of
Saint Mary's University in Nova Scotia. But you listed the research
grants of Mike McDonald of the University of British Columbia. Why?
They are both philosophers. They both take a keen interest in ethics
with regard to science and medicine. But only Chris has commented
here and neither Chris MacDonald nor Mike McDonald is paid by the
pharmaceutical industry. So why call either of them a pharma troll?

Reading this makes my head swirl. Joan Campbell said,"web of deceit
and corruption", yes indeed. Its impossible not to see the entire
medical/pharma industry as one giant family, engaged in deceit and
corruption.

What a
tangled forest of interlinking family trees, whose inhabitants
engage in a virtual blood sport to defend their financial
territories. Only unlike centuries past, they're fighting sick
infants and toddlers.

Angus,
you have the wrong MacDonald. Chris MacDonald, who left the comment
is not the Mike MacDonald you link to. Even so, I do not understand
how Mike MacDonald, a respected philosopher whose job it is to
investigate ethical conflicts in science and medicine, can be
described as a "Pharma Troll."

What these individuals
haven’t yet accepted is the era of the argument from authority is
over, thanks to the internet. It no longer works to say, “you must
behave in a certain way, as we are the experts on this and you don’t
have the knowledge to decide for yourself”. When someone in
authority states that administering seven vaccine doses
simultaneously has been conclusively shown to be safe, with some
quick googling I can check out myself whether it’s true or not. Two
decades ago I would have needed to spend days at a university
library. It wasn’t feasible for the masses to fact check the
self-appointed experts, we generally went along with what they said.

The vaccine defenders have used the old model of bluster and
lies, instead of rational persuasion to win converts. They act as if
its 1985 and we have no way to fact check their statements. In doing
such, they have lost their credibility as too often their statements
have been shown to be hyperbolic, distorted, or just downright
false. We are not dummies, I may not be a "vaccinologist", but as an
engineer I understand how to perform research, apply the scientific
method, and draw my own conclusions. I understand confirmation bias
and how the peer review system can be corrupted by those enforcing
dogma. Yet those that argue from authority insist that I must
discard my own rational thought and conclusions to follow their
dictates. Bullshit.

It does make you wonder how much longer us poor slobs will be
allowed access to the information. Those in authority think it is
too dangerous to allow us to think for ourselves.

Chris
Mac Donald by your remarks and the help of the web you yourself have
a conflict here "McDonald’s work is located at the intersection of
theory and practice in health care, business and professional life"

"4 Use this section to report other relationships or activities
that readers could perceive to have influenced, or that give the
appearance of potentially influencing, what you wrote in the
submitted work."

It
seems kind of ironic to accuse Goldacre of ad hominem attacks, when
the main focus of your own critique is to criticize Goldacre for who
is father is (i.e., an ad hominem attack).

If you actually think
Goldacre is in some kind of conflict of interest due to his family,
then come out and say so. But there's no way you can squeeze a COI
out of something as thin as "he writes on X and his dad is also an
expert on X."

It's
quite a pattern, isn't it? It reminds me of an ethically inverse
version of the story of how generation after generation of the
family of Robert Kearns-- inventor of the intermittant windshield
wiper-- went after Ford Motor Co. for stealing the patent (from the
film, "Flash of Genius"). Except in these cases, the "juniors" of
deeply corrupt and dangerous medical authorities feel compelled to
continue the cover up of their daddies' crimes. It's downright
biblical. I think it deserves its own haiku:

Great
article John. I think the public would be shocked to read about so
many Conflicts of Interest behind the Pro-MMR Brigade. Can we trust
anyone of these people? Sadly probably NO. Blood is thicker than
water and a favour done here and there, will be returned or rewarded
at a later date! What really gets me about these people is their
"holier than thou attitude" and their denigration of parents with
genuine vaccine safety concerns.

Here
is more on Ed Bernays, the uncle to Matthew Frued, the husband of
Elizabeth Murdoch who runs many media corps in UK. I think it an
interesting connection.
Edward Louis Bernays (November 22, 1891 – March 9, 1995, was an
American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda
along with Ivy Lee, referred to in his obituary as "the father of
public relations".[1] Combining the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and
Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas
of his uncle, Dr. Sigmund Freud, Bernays was one of the first to
attempt to manipulate public opinion using the subconscious.

He
felt this manipulation was necessary in society, which he regarded
as irrational and dangerous as a result of the 'herd instinct' that
Trotter had described.[citation needed] Adam Curtis's award-winning
2002 documentary for the BBC, The Century of the Self, pinpoints
Bernays as the originator of modern public relations, and Bernays
was named one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th
century by Life magazine.[2]

John,,, let's not forget the other connections between the Murdochs
and the Spin Machines...
Elizabeth Murdoch, Jame's sister,,, who runs many media in UK is
married to Matthew Freud, who runs Freud Communications, a public
relations firm. Freud, related to Sigmund and Ed Bernays.. "The
Father of Spin" who used his PR firm to topple governments etc. He
wrote Propanda which spoke of how to wind of the masses and feed
them propaganda. You should read up on him. These folks are experts
at this stuff,,, and the skills have been passed down for
generations.

This
is amazing John. What a great piece of detective work - and thank
you for all the work and thought this must have taken – and for
making it available to readers in the public domain. You have made a
wonderful job of teasing out the facts, illustrating connections,
and piecing together this complex jigsaw of nepotism and cronyism!
Once again, it is frightening to see the lengths to which this
little pack will go, to protect reputations and government policy.

As you well know, Dr Goldacre is obsessive about facts and
evidence. He is just as willing to criticis Big Pharma is he is to
criticise bogus nutritionists, fellow doctors, poor research or
dodgy journalism. Given this rare and admirable outlook, it is
absolutely ridiculous to suggest he would break his own strict rules
in some kind of bizarre attempt to support some obscure research his
father did in the late 80s.

I've now read this blog twice and I can't figure out what Dr
Goldacre would gain from doing so.

Uh,
not to crit your referencing but the link for “..personal anecdotes
about your MMR tragedy will be deleted for your own safety” I had to
find another reference to the /actual/ source of the quote, which is
actually "Try to be combative, intelligent, and rude, but remember
these three things: personal stories about your health will always
be deleted; childish personal attacks are only permitted when they
are very funny; and if your post is more than one thousand words
long then you are officially a loser."

Excellent. I guess Ben's reluctance to refer to his eminent father
is another 'dynasty effect' similiar to the former PM Tony Blair's
refusal to disclose if his son Ewan received his MMR jab back in
2001. Powerful and influential people like to protect their privacy.

Was
Andrew Wakefield a victim of concerted action? Hmmmm. Let's just say
that there is an appearance of impropriety. Actually, it's like a
smoking gun.

Generally speaking, the moral entrepeneurs, or "Dark
Lords" of the vaccine industry, are living large while many loving
parents are wrongfully imprisoned after being falsely accused and
convicted of "shaken baby syndrome". The horror! The injustice!

How many SIDS/SUID deaths are the direct result of a vaccine?
This goes to more than just the Hep B jab and MMR. It goes to the
"safety" of the vaccine schedules and global vaccine policy,
generally.

Great
post, Mr Stone - public health corruption is not a US-centric
phenomenon, it's worldwide. The characters you discuss typify the
growing legion of moral entrepeneurs, on both sides of the pond, who
have made faustian bargains and sold their eternal souls. This is
why we all need prayer, now more than ever.

not much to different in my opinion, an article below dont want to
get off topic from your great article above..

"3/7/2006 - "The concentration camps were used as a huge
laboratory for human experimentation," says Wolfgang Eckhart,
professor of Historical Medicine at the University of Heidelberg in
Germany. During the Holocaust, Bayer, Hoechst, BASF and other German
pharmaceutical..."

Wow!!
John - This is what I call investigative journalism. It's a pity
that you are not an investigative journalist. In the present media
climate you would not be employable. You are far too good at the job
and far too truthful and fact based!!

I don't think it is worse than the holocaust - certainly not for
holocaust victims - but it is very serious. We should not allow our
news to be managed in this way, and we pay a high price for doing
so.

Ben
Goldacre can keep his silly t-shirts and all his so called friends
for all I care. What another great article John Stone has written
and the way he shows us the web of deceit and corruption that these
sad bad individuals get up to licking each other's asses. To stoop
so low beggars belief.